I am constantly dumbfounded and appalled by man’s inhumanity to his fellow man. The atrocities carried out in Brussels last week once again left me aghast and searching to make sense of something that is so senseless.

Just like London, France and New York before them, this yet again was the bloody and indiscriminate slaughter of the innocents; men women and children of all creeds, races and colours; brutally cut down whilst buying a coffee, reading a paper or skipping through an airport terminal.

What goes through the mind of the people who commit these acts and how can you be brainwashed you so completely that you forget to feel? How do you ignore you humanity?

I have known terrorism for most of my fifty years on this planet and never really understood it. The IRA’s reign of terror killed and maimed many thousands and destroyed whole families, but in the end it wasn’t bombs that won the peace; it was the talking.

When opposing sides disagree, but are aware of each other’s ultimate goal, negotiations eventually take place and compromise can usually be reached.

But with the so called “Islamic State” there is a crucial difference; they don’t want to talk or negotiate; they just want everyone who isn’t like them wiped off the face of the earth.

The Foreign Secretary, Phillip Hammond, was in Peterborough this week and warned that the terrorism threat is as strong in our city as it is in London.

I have a twelve-year old daughter and sometimes I wonder what sort of world I have brought her into; how safe will her future be?

Make no mistake, these evil people want to destroy her future and yours, by spreading fear and hate; they hate the way we live our lives and detest our compassion and understanding.

They want to us to stop travelling, to avoid crowds and to change the way we live.

They want to breed mistrust of our fellow man and pit religion against religion, white against black, Muslim against Christian.

Their aim is anarchy, hate and ultimately control. Every warped ideology has roughly the same goals and we must not play into their hands.

Instead we should be vigilant, yet continue to live our lives as before.

But to continue the status quo is not enough; we must be much tougher on those that sympathise with these murderers and society as a whole must help to root them out.

When our very way of life is under attack it is almost criminal to have such porous borders and surely those that cross them, to fight for another power, must be treated with more than just suspicion.

If your grandfather had nipped over to Cologne to fight for Hitler in 1943, would he have been welcomed back with open arms a year later and given a pat on the back?

Whether we like it or not, these people have declared war on our way of life and the quicker we mobilise and unite against this threat, the safer our lives will become.

We have to stop the softly, softly approach and start fighting back in order to retain the freedoms that our forefathers laid down their lives for.